I again found a diamond. I guess Sundays are meant to be ‘millionaire’ days for me. This Sunday Hitesh rode me on his bike so the thrilling part of Anup’s moped was missing. Alisha was already on her action when we arrived. We found some new admission in our paathshala as well. Again we were waved at and greeted by the little palms of the children. My ears always love the sound of their squeals. They all are so amiable.
Alisha announced “This boy Rohit didn’t bath today.” I looked at Rohit but he didn’t look like without bath. Rohit said “I’ve a cold. So I didn’t bath.” Lawyer Alisha argued “A few minutes ago he was telling that 12.00 pm is time for him to bath. So he didn’t.” I thought the boy has a point. Then Alisha told them to collect their notebooks. As usual they all rushed to grab them. Alisha got irritated. She asked “What’s wrong? Why are you guys are behaving like animals? Didn’t I tell you about the difference between an animal and a human being? You all are behaving like animals today. Our spark boy Rohit replied “I’ll choose to be Donkey” I smirked. Again the boy has a point. I was just folding the chart of TABLES. Rohit was standing near me and was staring at the chart. I asked him to recite the table of 5. He recited it quickly in the rhythm. I saluted his ability of mugging up. We continued up to 14th then he started to make mistakes. I told him to prepare for it. He was writing the numbers in Hindi. I asked him to write in English, and what I noted was his style of writing the alphabet. Quiet odd it was. Some letters were in mirror image too. Then I taught him the proper method of writing the alphabet. We practiced writing the B for more than half an hour. In a whole page, each and every line just contained only B. I just want to teach him not to do the things just because you have to. Do it by heart. If you make a good start but don’t continue it then all the beautiful beginnings will go in vain. Then we moved on to C. It didn’t bother him much. But at D, he started again to struggle. We continued on D until end of class. He was exhausted in the end. But still his eyes were shining. Still he was talking with the same energy. He was making different excuses all time after writing each line. And he has a point all those times. In between those exercises, his mom came to check him out and even at one step she slapped him for his mistake. I told her not to but she just went away. The boy is really smart. He won’t let you win in arguments. I think he has nice sense even though he’s studying in just 2nd standard. His cheeks were dried up. I can see it turned in to small bruise. But he didn’t care for it. He didn’t even know it. He is a cousin of Nikita Sharma the girl who counts on the fingers of both hands simultaneously. You can understand that my second diamond almost has genes of her. I just wonder how they both are so clever. I just wonder about the life they live. But now I am sure that they both are diamonds we have found. I’m a millionaire now.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Friday, March 5, 2010
That was Magic
It was 28th February, Sunday; I was visiting our NGO project after a long time, and I was happy for that. Again it was a thrilling ride on Anup’s moped as our legs and brakes were making no difference in functioning to stop that thing moving. On the project Alisha and other guys were already on the job as usual. The children waved their hands in the air to greet us. Needless to say, though I love those waves, I don’t deserve them. Now I’m realizing in my life that the toughest job is to teach someone.
Nikita Sharma is around 8- to 9-year-old little girl comes there every Sunday, probably carrying hidden dreams in her eyes. I saw her while she was doing some subtraction in the notebook. All sums were almost correct, tagged with “GOOD” and ticked by Alisha. I decided to observe her some more time. In another round of exercise she stuck at one place where nos. like 24-18 came. Here she didn’t know how she’ll deduct 8 from 4. I asked “don’t you know how to do it?” She didn’t reply and continued to stare those digits. She’s shy. I asked her for notebook. First I thought in my mind the method how I should explain her. Meanwhile I asked her some formal question like “what will remain if I subtract 3 from 9?” she used pads of her fingers of both hands and reply within a millisecond. Wow, I thought. Again I asked a similar subtraction, again she used those tiny pads, again she replied within a millisecond and again I didn’t get how she used both hands to get the answer. Generally we use first single hand then another one. But she was using both hands simultaneously. I didn’t know how! I tried but I lost in lines between finger pads. Then I taught her what to do when the right hand digit of the number is less than the other number’s right hand digit. I explained to her like this “suppose if I’m subtracting 18 from 24 then do like this. Bring 1 from left digit and consider it as 10. Now add 10 with 4 you’ll get 14. Now subtract 8 from 14. What will you get?” Again she derived her answer by her fascinating method of both hands. She replied with spark “its 6”. I smiled “great. Now you’ve borrowed 1 from neighbor. So what will remain if I’ll take 1 from there?” It was not tough to answer for her. I thought this method is easy for me because I know the answer but she don’t have that much time to think to consider 1 as 10 then add it then again another subtraction in her exams. She was also getting confuse but didn’t tell. I though something and told her that “now don’t consider 1 as 10. Just join 1 with the right hand no. and it will become bigger. Then just do normal subtraction. It’s simple.” She just nodded and became lost in her sums. She grasped the thing with the speed of light, I tell you. She also told me that she knew how to divide two numbers and wanted to do more sums. Then Alisha gave her few examples.
I was looking to the other children then and was thinking about how to use both hands to do subtraction so fast. I thought she’s more intelligent than me. I hope she’ll teach me that fascinating stuff. I found a diamond. I hope she’ll glitter in her life. There are so many children around me who teach me new things. I’m not sure whether I go there to help them out or they help me out. I just want to continue my journey with them. I hope we will find other diamonds with Magic Stick. Believe in change. Believe in magic.
Nikita Sharma is around 8- to 9-year-old little girl comes there every Sunday, probably carrying hidden dreams in her eyes. I saw her while she was doing some subtraction in the notebook. All sums were almost correct, tagged with “GOOD” and ticked by Alisha. I decided to observe her some more time. In another round of exercise she stuck at one place where nos. like 24-18 came. Here she didn’t know how she’ll deduct 8 from 4. I asked “don’t you know how to do it?” She didn’t reply and continued to stare those digits. She’s shy. I asked her for notebook. First I thought in my mind the method how I should explain her. Meanwhile I asked her some formal question like “what will remain if I subtract 3 from 9?” she used pads of her fingers of both hands and reply within a millisecond. Wow, I thought. Again I asked a similar subtraction, again she used those tiny pads, again she replied within a millisecond and again I didn’t get how she used both hands to get the answer. Generally we use first single hand then another one. But she was using both hands simultaneously. I didn’t know how! I tried but I lost in lines between finger pads. Then I taught her what to do when the right hand digit of the number is less than the other number’s right hand digit. I explained to her like this “suppose if I’m subtracting 18 from 24 then do like this. Bring 1 from left digit and consider it as 10. Now add 10 with 4 you’ll get 14. Now subtract 8 from 14. What will you get?” Again she derived her answer by her fascinating method of both hands. She replied with spark “its 6”. I smiled “great. Now you’ve borrowed 1 from neighbor. So what will remain if I’ll take 1 from there?” It was not tough to answer for her. I thought this method is easy for me because I know the answer but she don’t have that much time to think to consider 1 as 10 then add it then again another subtraction in her exams. She was also getting confuse but didn’t tell. I though something and told her that “now don’t consider 1 as 10. Just join 1 with the right hand no. and it will become bigger. Then just do normal subtraction. It’s simple.” She just nodded and became lost in her sums. She grasped the thing with the speed of light, I tell you. She also told me that she knew how to divide two numbers and wanted to do more sums. Then Alisha gave her few examples.
I was looking to the other children then and was thinking about how to use both hands to do subtraction so fast. I thought she’s more intelligent than me. I hope she’ll teach me that fascinating stuff. I found a diamond. I hope she’ll glitter in her life. There are so many children around me who teach me new things. I’m not sure whether I go there to help them out or they help me out. I just want to continue my journey with them. I hope we will find other diamonds with Magic Stick. Believe in change. Believe in magic.
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